Antic Hay

  ‘Have you ever known what it’s like to love some one so much that you feel you could die of it? So that it hurts all the time. As though there were a wound. Have you ever known that?’

  Mrs Viveash smiled her agonizing smile, nodded slowly and said, ‘Perhaps. And one doesn’t die, you know. One doesn’t die.’

  Lypiatt was leaning back, staring fixedly up at her. The tears were dry on his face, his cheeks were flushed. ‘Do you know what it is,’ he asked, ‘to love so much that you begin to long for the anodyne of physical pain to quench the pain in the soul? You don’t know that.’ And suddenly, with his clenched fist, he began to bang the wooden dais on which he was kneeling, blow after blow, with all his strength.

  Mrs Viveash leant forward and tried to arrest his hand. ‘You’re mad, Casimir,’ she said. ‘You’re mad. Don’t do that.’ She spoke with anger.

  Lypiatt laughed till his face was all broken up with the grimace, and proffered for her inspection his bleeding knuckles. The skin hung in little white tags and tatters, and from below the blood was slowly oozing up to the surface. ‘Look,’ he said, and laughed again. Then suddenly, with an extraordinary agility, he jumped to his feet, bounded from the dais and began once more to stride up and down the fairway between his easel and the door.

  ‘By God,’ he kept repeating, ‘by God, by God. I feel it in me. I can face the whole lot of you; the whole damned lot. Yes, and I shall get the better of you yet. An Artist’ – he called up that traditional ghost and it comforted him; he wrapped himself with a protective gesture within the ample folds of its bright mantle – ‘an Artist doesn’t fail under unhappiness. He gets new strength from it. The torture makes him sweat new masterpieces . . .’

  He began to talk about his books, his poems and pictures; all the great things in his head, the things he had already done. He talked about his exhibition – ah, by God, that would astonish them, that would bowl them over, this time. The blood mounted to his face; there was a flush over the high projecting cheekbones. He could feel the warm blood behind his eyes. He laughed aloud; he was a laughing lion. He stretched out his arms; he was enormous, his arms reached out like the branches of a cedar. The Artist walked across the world and the mangy dogs ran yelping and snapping behind him. The great wind blew and blew, driving him on; it lifted him and he began to fly.

  Mrs Viveash listened. It didn’t look as though he would get much further with the portrait.

  CHAPTER VII

  IT WAS PRESS Day. The critics had begun to arrive; Mr Albemarle circulated among them with a ducal amiability. The young assistant hovered vaguely about, straining to hear what the great men had to say and trying to pretend that he wasn’t eavesdropping. Lypiatt’s pictures hung on the walls, and Lypiatt’s catalogue, thick with its preface and its explanatory notes, was in all hands.

  ‘Very strong,’ Mr Albemarle kept repeating, ‘very strong indeed!’ It was his password for the day.

  Little Mr Clew, who represented the Daily Post, was inclined to be enthusiastic. ‘How well he writes!’ he said to Mr Albemarle, looking up from the catalogue. ‘And how well he paints! What impasto!’

  Impasto, impasto – the young assistant sidled off unobtrusively to the desk and made a note of it. He would look the word up in Grubb’s Dictionary of Art and Artists later on. He made his way back, circuitously, and as though by accident, into Mr Clew’s neighbourhood.

  Mr Clew was one of those rare people who have a real passion for art. He loved painting, all painting, indiscriminately. In a picture-gallery he was like a Turk in a harem; he adored them all. He loved Memling as much as Raphael, he loved Grünewald and Michelangelo, Holman Hunt and Manet, Romney and Tintoretto; how happy he could be with all of them! Sometimes, it is true, he hated; but that was only when familiarity had not yet bred love. At the first Post-Impressionist Exhibition, for example, in 1911, he had taken a very firm stand. ‘This is an obscene farce,’ he had written then. Now, however, there was no more passionate admirer of Matisse’s genius. As a connoisseur and kunstforscher, Mr Clew was much esteemed. People would bring him dirty old pictures to look at, and he would exclaim at once: Why, it’s an El Greco, a Piazzetta, or some other suitable name. Asked how he knew, he would shrug his shoulders and say: But it’s signed all over. His certainty and his enthusiasm were infectious. Since the coming of El Greco into fashion, he had discovered dozens of early works by that great artist. For Lord Petersfield’s collection alone he had found four early El Grecos, all by pupils of Bassano. Lord Petersfield’s confidence in Mr Clew was unbounded; not even that affair of the Primitives had shaken it. It was a sad affair: Lord Petersfield’s Duccio had shown signs of cracking; the estate carpenter was sent for to take a look at the panel; he had looked. ‘A worse-seasoned piece of Illinois hickory,’ he said, ‘I’ve never seen.’ After that he looked at the Simone Martini; for that, on the contrary, he was full of praise. Smooth-grained, well-seasoned – it wouldn’t crack, no, not in a hundred years. ‘A nicer slice of board never came out of America.’ He had a hyperbolical way of speaking. Lord Petersfield was extremely angry; he dismissed the estate carpenter on the spot. After that he told Mr Clew that he wanted a Giorgione, and Mr Clew went out and found him one which was signed all over.

  ‘I like this very much,’ said Mr Clew, pointing to one of the thoughts with which Lypiatt had prefaced his catalogue. ‘“Genius,”’ he adjusted his spectacles and began to read aloud, ‘“is life. Genius is a force of nature. In art, nothing else counts. The modern impotents, who are afraid of genius and who are envious of it, have invented in self-defence the notion of the Artist. The Artist with his sense of form, his style, his devotion to pure beauty, et cetera, et cetera. But Genius includes the Artist; every Genius has, among very many others, the qualities attributed by the impotents to the Artist. The Artist without genius is a carver of fountains through which no water flows.” Very true,’ said Mr Clew, ‘very true indeed.’ He marked the passage with his pencil.

  Mr Albemarle produced the password. ‘Very strongly put,’ he said.

  ‘I have always felt that myself,’ said Mr Clew. ‘El Greco, for example . . .’

  ‘Good morning. What about El Greco?’ said a voice, all in one breath. The thin, long, skin-covered skeleton of Mr Mallard hung over them like a guilty conscience. Mr Mallard wrote every week in the Hebdomadal Digest. He had an immense knowledge of art, and a sincere dislike of all that was beautiful. The only modern painter whom he really admired was Hodler. All others were treated by him with a merciless savagery; he tore them to pieces in his weekly articles with all the holy gusto of a Calvinist iconoclast smashing images of the Virgin.

  ‘What about El Greco?’ he repeated. He had a peculiarly passionate loathing of El Greco.

  Mr Clew smiled up at him propitiatingly; he was afraid of Mr Mallard. His enthusiasms were no match for Mr Mallard’s erudite and logical disgusts. ‘I was merely quoting him as an example,’ he said.

  ‘An example, I hope, of incompetent drawing, baroque composition, disgusting forms, garish colouring and hysterical subject-matter.’ Mr Mallard showed his old ivory teeth in a menacing smile. ‘Those are the only things which El Greco’s work exemplifies.’

  Mr Clew gave a nervous little laugh. ‘What do you think of these?’ he asked, pointing to Lypiatt’s canvases.

  ‘They look to me very ordinarily bad,’ answered Mr Mallard.

  The young assistant listened appalled. In a business like this, how was it possible to make good?

  ‘All the same,’ said Mr Clew courageously, ‘I like that bowl of roses in the window with the landscape behind. Number twenty-nine.’ He looked in the catalogue. ‘And there’s a really charming little verse about it:

  “O beauty of the rose,

  Goodness as well as perfume exhaling!

  Who gazes on these flowers,

  On this blue hill and ripening field – he knows

  Where duty leads and that the nameless Powers

  In a rose can speak th
eir will.”

  Really charming!’ Mr Clew made another mark with his pencil.

  ‘But commonplace, commonplace.’ Mr Mallard shook his head. ‘And in any case a verse can’t justify a bad picture. What an unsubtle harmony of colour! And how uninteresting the composition is! That receding diagonal – it’s been worked to death.’ He too made a mark in his catalogue – a cross and a little circle, arranged like the skull and cross-bones on a pirate’s flag. Mr Mallard’s catalogues were always covered with these little marks: they were his symbols of condemnation.

  Mr Albemarle, meanwhile, had moved away to greet the new arrivals. To the critic of the Daily Cinema he had to explain that there were no portraits of celebrities. The reporter from the Evening Planet had to be told which were the best pictures.

  ‘Mr Lypiatt,’ he dictated, ‘is a poet and philosopher as well as a painter. His catalogue is a – h’m – declaration of faith.’

  The reporter took it down in shorthand. ‘And very nice too,’ he said. ‘I’m most grateful to you, sir, most grateful.’ And he hurried away, to get to the Cattle Show before the King should arrive. Mr Albemarle affably addressed himself to the critic of the Morning Globe.

  ‘I always regard this gallery,’ said a loud and cheerful voice, full of bulls and canaries in chorus, ‘as positively a mauvais lieu. Such exhibitions!’ And Mr Mercaptan shrugged his shoulders expressively. He halted to wait for his companion.

  Mrs Viveash had lagged behind, reading the catalogue as she slowly walked along. ‘It’s a complete book,’ she said, ‘full of poems and essays and short stories even, so far as I can see.’

  ‘Oh, the usual cracker mottoes.’ Mr Mercaptan laughed. ‘I know the sort of thing. “Look after the past and the future will look after itself.” “God squared minus Man squared equals Art-plus-life times Art-minus-life.” “The Higher the Art the fewer the morals” – only that’s too nearly good sense to have been invented by Lypiatt. But I know the sort of thing. I could go on like that for ever.’ Mr Mercaptan was delighted with himself.

  ‘I’ll read you one of them,’ said Mrs Viveash. ‘“A picture is a chemical combination of plastic form and spiritual significance.”’

  ‘Crikey!’ said Mr Mercaptan.

  ‘“Those who think that a picture is a matter of nothing but plastic form are like those who imagine that water is made of nothing but hydrogen.”’

  Mr Mercaptan made a grimace. ‘What writing!’ he exclaimed; ‘le style c’est l’homme. Lypiatt hasn’t got a style. Argal – inexorable conclusion – Lypiatt doesn’t exist. My word, though. Look at those horrible great nudes there. Like Caraccis with cubical muscles.’

  ‘Samson and Delilah,’ said Mrs Viveash. ‘Would you like me to read about them?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  Mrs Viveash did not press the matter. Casimir, she thought, must have been thinking about her when he wrote this little poem about Poets and Women, crossed genius, torments, the sweating of masterpieces. She sighed. ‘Those leopards are rather nice,’ she said, and looked at the catalogue again. ‘“An animal is a symbol and its form is significant. In the long process of adaptation, evolution has refined and simplified and shaped, till every part of the animal expresses one desire, a single idea. Man, who has become what he is, not by specialization, but by generalization, symbolizes with his body no one thing. He is a symbol of everything from the most hideous and ferocious bestiality to godhead.”’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Mr Mercaptan.

  A canvas of mountains and enormous clouds like nascent sculptures presented itself.

  ‘“Aerial Alps”’ Mrs Viveash began to read.

  ‘“Aerial Alps of amber and of snow,

  Junonian flesh, and bosomy alabaster

  Carved by the wind’s uncertain hands . . .”’

  Mr Mercaptan stopped his ears. ‘Please, please,’ he begged.

  ‘Number seventeen,’ said Mrs Viveash, ‘is called “Woman on a Cosmic Background.”’ A female figure stood leaning against a pillar on a hilltop, and beyond was a blue night with stars. ‘Underneath is written: “For one at least, she is more than the starry universe.”’ Mrs Viveash remembered that Lypiatt had once said very much that sort of thing to her. ‘So many of Casimir’s things remind me,’ she said, ‘of those Italian vermouth advertisements. You know – Cinzano, Bonomelli and all those. I wish they didn’t. This woman in white with her head in the Great Bear . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Poor Casimir.’

  Mr Mercaptan roared and squealed with laughter. ‘Bonomelli,’ he said; ‘that’s precisely it. What a critic, Myra! I take off my hat.’ They moved on. ‘And what’s this grand transformation scene?’ he asked.

  Mrs Viveash looked at the catalogue. ‘It’s called “The Sermon on the Mount”,’ she said. ‘And really, do you know, I rather like it. All that crowd of figures slanting up the hill and the single figure on the top – it seems to me very dramatic.’

  ‘My dear,’ protested Mr Mercaptan.

  ‘And in spite of everything,’ said Mrs Viveash, feeling suddenly and uncomfortably that she had somehow been betraying the man, ‘he’s really very nice, you know. Very nice indeed.’ Her expiring voice sounded very decidedly.

  ‘Ah, ces femmes,’ exclaimed Mr Mercaptan, ‘ces femmes! They’re all Pasiphaes and Ledas. They all in their hearts prefer beasts to men, savages to civilized beings. Even you, Myra, I really believe.’ He shook his head.

  Mrs Viveash ignored the outburst. ‘Very nice,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘Only rather a bore . . .’ Her voice expired altogether.

  They continued their round of the gallery.

  CHAPTER VIII

  CRITICALLY, IN THE glasses of Mr Bojanus’s fitting-room, Gumbril examined his profile, his back view. Inflated, the Patent Small-Clothes bulged, bulged decidedly, though with a certain gracious opulence that might, in a person of the other sex, have seemed only deliciously natural. In him, however, Gumbril had to admit, the opulence seemed a little misplaced and paradoxical. Still, if one has to suffer in order to be beautiful, one must also expect to be ugly in order not to suffer. Practically, the trousers were a tremendous success. He sat down heavily on the hard wooden bench of the fitting-room and was received as though on a lap of bounding resiliency; the Patent Small-Clothes, there was no doubt, would be proof even against marble. And the coat, he comforted himself, would mask with its skirts the too decided bulge. Or if it didn’t, well, there was no help for it. One must resign oneself to bulging, that was all.

  ‘Very nice,’ he declared at last.

  Mr Bojanus, who had been watching his client in silence and with a polite but also, Gumbril could not help feeling, a somewhat ironical smile, coughed. ‘It depends,’ he said, ‘precisely what you mean by “nice”.’ He cocked his head on one side, and the fine waxed end of his moustache was like a pointer aimed up at some remote star.

  Gumbril said nothing, but catching sight once more of his own side view, nodded a dubious agreement.

  ‘If by nice,’ continued Mr Bojanus, ‘you mean comfortable, well and good. If, however, you mean elegant, then, Mr Gumbril, I fear I must disagree.’

  ‘But elegance,’ said Gumbril, feebly playing the philosopher, ‘is only relative, Mr Bojanus. There are certain African negroes among whom it is considered elegant to pierce the lips and distend them with wooden plates, until the mouth looks like a pelican’s beak.’

  Mr Bojanus placed his hand in his bosom and slightly bowed. ‘Very possibly, Mr Gumbril,’ he replied. ‘But if you’ll pardon my saying so, we are not African negroes.’

  Gumbril was crushed, deservedly. He looked at himself again in the mirrors. ‘Do you object,’ he asked after a pause, ‘to all eccentricities in dress, Mr Bojanus? Would you put us all into your elegant uniform?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ replied Mr Bojanus. ‘There are certain walks of life in which eccentricity in appearance is positively a sine qua non, Mr Gumbril, and I might almost say de rigueur.’

  ‘And
which walks of life, Mr Bojanus, may I ask? You refer, perhaps, to the artistic walks? Sombreros and Byronic collars and possibly velveteen trousers? Though all that sort of thing is surely a little out of date, nowadays.’

  Enigmatically Mr Bojanus smiled, a playful Sphinx. He thrust his right hand deeper into his bosom and with his left twisted to a finer needle the point of his moustache. ‘Not artists, Mr Gumbril.’ He shook his head. ‘In practice they may show themselves a little eccentric and negleejay. But they have no need to look unusual on principle. It’s only the politicians who need to do it on principle. It’s only de rigueur, as one might say, in the political walks, Mr Gumbril.’

  ‘You surprise me,’ said Gumbril. ‘I should have thought that it was to the politician’s interest to look respectable and normal.’

  ‘But it is still more to his interest as a leader of men to look distinguished,’ Mr Bojanus replied. ‘Well, not precisely distinguished,’ he corrected himself, ‘because that implies that politicians look distangay, which I regret to say, Mr Gumbril, they very often don’t. Distinguishable, is more what I mean.’

  ‘Eccentricity is their badge of office?’ suggested Gumbril. He sat down luxuriously on the Patent Small-Clothes.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ said Mr Bojanus, tilting his moustaches. ‘The leader has got to look different from the other ones. In the good old days they always wore their official badges. The leader ’ad his livery, like every one else, to show who he was. That was sensible, Mr Gumbril. Nowadays he has no badge – at least not for ordinary occasions – for I don’t count Privy Councillors’ uniforms and all that sort of once-a-year fancy dress. ‘E’s reduced to dressing in some eccentric way or making the most of the peculiarities of ’is personal appearance. A very ’apazard method of doing things, Mr Gumbril, very ’apazard.’

  Gumbril agreed.

  Mr Bojanus went on, making small, neat gestures as he spoke. ‘Some of them,’ he said, ‘wear ’uge collars, like Mr Gladstone. Some wear orchids and eyeglasses, like Joe Chamberlain. Some let their ‘air grow, like Lloyd George. Some wear curious ’ats, like Winston Churchill. Some put on black shirts, like this Mussolini, and some put on red ones, like Garibaldi. Some turn up their moustaches, like the German Emperor. Some turn them down, like Clemenceau. Some grow whiskers, like Tirpitz. I don’t speak of all the uniforms, orders, ornaments, ’ead-dresses, feathers, crowns, buttons, tattooings, ear-rings, sashes, swords, trains, tiaras, urims, thummims and what not, Mr Gumbril, that ’ave been used in the past and in other parts of the world to distinguish the leader. We, ’oo knows our ’istory, Mr Gumbril, we know all about that.’